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Martin Luther King, Jr Memorial (photo: michaelhyman300/flickr)
Another American cliche bites the dust, thanks to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar (who hasn’t done a lot I like until this). Faced with overwhelming outrage, voiced eloquently and led by poet Maya Angelou, over a misleading and truncated quote of the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr carved into his national memorial on the Mall, Secretary Salazar decided that “carved in stone” needn’t mean irrevocably permanent, when a wrong has been done.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told The Post today that the quote will be corrected. He has given the National Park Service 30 days — because “things only happen when you put a deadline on it” — to consult with the King Memorial Foundation, family members and other interested parties and come up with a more accurate alternative.
“This is important because Dr. King and his presence on the Mall is a forever presence for the United States of America, and we have to make sure that we get it right,” Salazar said.
This isn’t only a victory for Maya Angelou and MLK’s son, Martin Luther King III, who said, “That’s not what Dad said.” It’s also a victory for Stephen Colbert:
Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert noted that it was “to the point. Not Dr. King’s point, but still. Brevity is the soul of saving money on chiseling fees.”
Here’s what got carved in stone:
“I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness”
Here’s what Dr King actually said:
“If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.”
The difference is so great that the excerpted quote, as carved, completely distorts Dr King’s meaning and point, making him seem, as Maya Angelou wrote, “like an arrogant twit.” It’s great news that Secretary Salazar has decided to open the carving up for correction, especially since it went wrong without approval. If words are carved in stone, to ring down the ages, America needs to get them, and their meaning, right.
So much for “carved in stone.”
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Teddy!
Still better than the Republican candidates statements, which are only carved in sand on the beach below the tidal line.
Teddy!
Dr. Dick!!
They should have done it right in the first place *glaring*
Both the statue itself and the clipped quote suggest a lack of completitude.
I don’t really have a problem with the statue (it seems to suggest a solidity, as though the man will not be moved), but the quote really needed to be accurate and true to the man.
teddy!
The King memorial is a disappointment to me. I don’t think it looks like him – looks angry. I’m happy that there is a memorial but it could have been much better IMO.
If I had a nickel for every time I’ve said that about the U.S. government…
You would own the national debt at this point.
Heh. If the Thugs hated left-wingers before…
yeah – about the quote – that irked me from the start.
and OK I see your point about the statue, and Lord knows, he would. not. be. moved. I’ll look at it in a new light now, although I won’t be able to get passed the Lando Calrissian nature of the statue.
ain’t that the truth!
I will agree that it does look rather angry (not really appropriate to the man) and is not a really good likeness. Can’t say that I have really paid much attention to it. I was delighted that they put it up, but have pretty much lost interest in public art in my old age, which seems to be either really boring or deliberately controversial.
They would probably see that as worse than the Chinese owning a chunk of it.
And there is so litte that America has contributed that will ring down the ages…
On the other side of this, I’d gladly give up the federal holiday and the renamed streets and the monument to know that people are actually listening to what King had to say. I’m not so sure that, as a whole, this hasn’t become a largely message-free celebration.
In fairness, I don’t think that what was produced was intended to be anything other than respectful.
Oh hells no! We can’t have that. Indeed, all these celebrations are intended to draw attention away from what the man actually said, not just about race, but also about mindless wars and the treatment of workers.
Case in point: we let kids out of school tomorrow, instead of using the time to teach the message…
Dawg knows we do not want to teach the actual history of this country, as opposed to the rah-rah jingoism and feel good march of civilization horseshit that usually passes for history in the schools.
Oh yes, it is a wonder it even exists.
I do even, at my equally old age, enjoy the idea of public art, it matters. It will say something about us 100 years from now, 500 years from now(dot dot dot)- thinking about all the Civil War monuments, North and South.
Heaven Forfend!
Well, the Texas Legislature and State Board of Education actually do forbid it.
And since the Texas Board of Education adopts textbooks for statewide use, in a high-population state, it carries a disproportionate influence. Have I mentioned that Rick Perry is the scum of the earth?
The statue looks like a Mao leftover. It’s not an expression I ever remember seeing on Doctor King’s face in pictures or newsreels, nor a physical attitude that recollects him at all.
You mean this holiday is about something other than selling mattresses and cars?
I always thought that Dr. King’s expression was that of a man completely at peace with himself and what he was doing. The memorial looks as if he wants to punch someone – not at all like anything I ever saw.
For smaller, less monumental works of public art, intent matters; for something this imposing and eternal, results matter. This is a real failure of the National Capital Fine Arts Commission.
Why go to China for this?
No, it’s exactly about commercialism. It’s an American holiday, for Pete’s sake, what did you expect?
it’s criminal they have such an influence over national textbook sales – am I kidding myself thinking ePublishing will change all that?
Monument Avenue in Richmond — with its rich symbolism of rider/horse relationships illustrating where the commemorated General fought, died, and under what circumstances — is something for the ages indeed. I don’t think there’s another public avenue in America like it.
And yet it celebrates treason.
why I do believe you have
but, please, we can never hear it enough *g*
I was thinking of exactly the same place!
Wait, what? What’s this about China?
You’re not telling me a statue of the quintessentially American Martin Luther King was carved outside the United States?
I was paying attention when the statue was put up, including the strangely truncated quotation, which I did not understand. (how it happened. I mean) But I totally missed anything about a China connection.
After all, we’re talking about the kind of sleazebag who can defend desecration of corpses…
The artist’s name is Lei Yixin. Wiki says “it’s unclear how much money was saved by having it made in China.”
The WalMartization of America continues.
We Okies have been trying to warn you about those Texans for decades, but y’all just wouldn’t listen.
That’s exactly what I was just thinking.
Especially we who have enjoyed his being away from the state for so long.
Best thing about his misbegotten campaign.
Great minds think alike…and so do ours.
Molly would have had a wonderful time with Perry and the rest. We could use the laughs.
So that was the motivation? To save money? I mean, I have no objection if the artist is the best for the job…jeez, was there even a competition, as there usually is?
Apparently there was no consultation with anyone and I read that many in the AA community are not at all happy.
I’ll bet money would be no object if it had been a statue of St. Ronald the Divine.
*Sigh* I still miss Molly. Nobody else ever really captured the zeitgeist of the state and the region so well and skewered it so thoroughly.
It wouldn’t be made in China either. Would have been true blue Americans, non-union, of course.
actually I can understand his point that they are “youngsters’
and I really go with dday’s (and other’s) point that “is this the line?”
Would have been true
bluewhite AmericansFixorated for greater accuracy.
I thought it looked a lot like Mussolini. I’ll be seeing a lot of that kind of statue over the next couple of weeks. We landed in Moscow yesterday and are ensconced in our apartment near Mayakovsky Metro. It’s 9:00 am here and still pitch black. I now understand hy the clubs stay open until 11:00 am. It’s still night until 10:00 or so. Of course, they don’t really get started until 2:00. Life in the big city. We are skipping it, not to mention that the whole scene is well above my pay grade.
Will pass on impressions from time to time. The last time I was here was in 1995 on a USIA speaking gig. Big difference. Not all for the better, unless you really really like mall shopping. I didn’t fly all the way here for the Colours of Benneton.
I’m astounded by the mistake on MLK’s graven image. I suppose the person in charge had a college education, which says something about the decline in post-secondary standards. In my day we actually looked stuff up.
lol
in a way I hope she is resting restlessly – what a grave loss.
Just you wait!
Time for me to toddle off. Take care all.
Somewhere she and Ann are drinking Jack Daniels and laughing like mad. That thought makes me happy.
altho what is with guys and peeing on things? – as a sitter-down, I don’t get it.
Goodnight Dick.
Guess they didn’t have any snow to write in. This incident is one of the most disgusting of this entire farce of a war and it makes me ashamed. Are there no boundaries?
Ah, I found this which tells quite a bit:
I did know that it was Alpha Phi Alpha that commissioned the statue, not any government agency, but had forgotten.
So, since they selected the artist while he was in the USA, we may be jumping to false conclusions about cost being the reason.
But the fact that the sculptor has been working in Communist China for some years may explain the Socialist Realist tone of the statue.
I can’t help wondering if he just didn’t have enough knowledge of Dr. King to carve what we would see as a better likeness, with a more accurate, um, mood, or attitude.
That statue is not Dr. King. Period. It looks like warmed-over Mao.
Considering how badly the statue was botched, it doesn’t surprise me the quotation was botched as well. It’s as if whoever designed it got all their knowledge of MLK Jr. from his Wikipedia article.
Heartbreaking that, in a time of horrendous economic depression, “we” can not even honor our heroes with something made in the United States:
“Standing in the shadow of the Washington Monument, the statue shows Dr King emerging from a mountain of Chinese granite with his arms crossed and is called The Stone of Hope.
However, there has been controversy over the choice of Lei Yixin, a 57-year-old master sculptor from Changsha in Hunan province, to carry out the work. Mr. Lei, who has in the past carved two statues of Mao Tse-tung, one of which stands in the former garden of Mao Anqing, the Chinese leader’s son, carried out almost all of the work in Changsha.
More than 150 granite blocks, weighing some 1,600 tons, were then shipped from Xiamen to the port of Baltimore, and reassembled by a team of 100 workmen, including ten Chinese stone masons brought over specifically for the project.”
UK Telegraph By Malcolm Moore, Shanghai
Exactly. It’d be like me trying to design a memorial for Mahatma Gandhi, and being picked for the job over thousands of local homegrown Indian sculptors whose little fingers forgot more about the Great Soul that I’d ever know.
You still here? Are you going to be in Moscow long? What brings you this time? Говорите по-русски? Пажалуйста, скажите все!
The linked articles in my post illustrate what happened; once the entire work was approved, including the entire quote, someone made a decision to use LARGER letters, thus truncating the quote. Quotes, especially, must be approved by the Fine Arts Commission, which wasn’t consulted about the change.
They will certainly face war crimes charges; whether in America or not remains to be seen.
Sorry, Teddy, I had only read the first link.
I don’t understand the argument of the architect who made the decision that “there’s only so much space” on the side of the monument. That side of the monument looks pretty damn big to me.
Such a shame.
… that we know of.
No need to apologize; I just wanted you to know the entire sad story is linked in the embeds in the post….